Olympics Hangover? Elections Should Cure That

I’ve been talking to more than a few people in the past two days who admitted they were depressed because the Olympics were ending. Last month, I’d been trying my best to be cynical about the London Games (and just about every Olympiad since the mid 1990s). I got turned off when news broke that the IOC was taking bribes in exchange for awarding the games to certain cities. Suddenly, the “mystery” as to why Atlanta was chosen in ’96 instead of Athens (it would have been the 100th anniversary since the modern games started in Greece in 1896) became clear. It sullied the experience for me.

But sometime last week, I caught Olympics Fever. Maybe it was seeing my stepdaughters – who pretty much loathe professional sports — get excited about track-and-field and gymnastics. Or maybe it all reminded me of being a little kid in ’76, watching the Montreal games when Bruce Jenner won the decathlon and Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci took both the gymnastics and pop culture worlds by storm. Whatever the reason, I got into these Olympic Games more than I have in nearly 20 years. Now, I’m not among the crowd that is “depressed” about them ending — my life, unfortunately, is too damn busy for that — but I am glad in a small way that I was able to enjoy them, finally, for the first time in years.

Having all all that, sports can be nothing but a big corruptible distraction from the things that really matter. Things like local elections. We’ve got some big ones here in the Tri-City area. In the coming days and weeks, we’ll be doing a number of stories on those candidates the issues facing Tri-City communities. Feel free to contact me at cdebenedetti@bayareanewsgroup.com or on this blog re: any issues you think are the most pressing in your city, school district, etc.

If all goes well for your interests at the polls in November, you won’t have that “day-after depression” that so many of my friends have re: the Olympics.